RTI reply shows most of his official visits are to his home state, specifically to state capital Mumbai and Nagpur, his constituency and RSS HQ.
New Delhi: Union minister Nitin Gadkari maintains a curious travel schedule — of every 20 flights he boards for official trips, at least 16 are bound for a destination in Maharashtra.
Most, in fact, are headed to Mumbai, the state capital, and Nagpur, the minister’s Lok Sabha constituency and headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP.
Gadkari made about 200 official trips within the country between June 2014 and the first week of March this year, according to official documents made available under the Right to Information Act. Of these, only 30-odd were outside Maharashtra.
Objection to visits
Gadkari’s frequent visits to his home state have raised eyebrows in the government, so much so that he had been “sounded out by the higher-ups through a bureaucrat in the ministry” in late 2016 that he should reduce the frequency of his Nagpur visits, a senior road transport ministry official told ThePrint.
But apparently nothing much came of it as Gadkari rejected the objection.
Gadkari is counted among the best-performing ministers in the Narendra Modi government and he wears many hats: minister of road transport and highways; minister of shipping; and minister of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation.
Many of his visits to Maharashtra were, according to official documents, in connection with programmes and events of his ministries. For instance, the agenda for one of his visits to Nagpur — in May 2017 — was a “meeting with Hon’ble Defence Minister”.
Sample his official trips in November 2017: To attend Dun & Bradstreet Infra award in Mumbai (2 Nov.); “local engagements” in Nagpur (3-5 Nov.); mid-year review meeting of the ministry of shipping in Goa and press conference in Mumbai (5-8 Nov.); review meeting of NHAI projects in Pune and interaction with Finland’s minister of transport & communication in Nagpur (9-13 Nov.); local engagements in Nagpur (13-14 Nov.); local engagements in Nagpur and Mumbai (18-20 Nov.); review meeting of national highways, shipping and water resources in Chennai (22-23 Nov.); conference on methanol in Pune and local engagements in Nagpur (24-26 Nov.).
In the first five weeks of 2018, Gadkari made a dozen trips within the country, one of which was to Lucknow, and 11 to Nagpur and Mumbai. With the general elections and Maharashtra assembly polls scheduled next year, the frequency of such visits is likely to only increase, sources in his ministry said.
‘Trips aim to redress problems’
Gadkari, an RSS volunteer who rose to become national president of the BJP, joined the Narendra Modi government in 2014. He was a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council for 25 years before successfully contesting the general elections for the first time in 2014.
A road transport ministry official close to Gadkari told ThePrint that the minister tried to visit his Lok Sabha constituency “practically every weekend”, because at least 2,000 people meet him to seek redressal of their problems.
“That he nurses his constituency, as also adjoining constituencies, so well should be seen positively. Then there are local MLAs who want him to inaugurate or lay foundation stones of different projects,” the official said.
Gadkari’s track record
While road construction has picked up pace and the bottlenecks stalling many projects have been removed, Gadkari has failed to meet his own target of constructing 41 km of road every day — the actual figure was around 22 km per day in 2016-17. Road transport ministry officials say that although the figures are likely to improve in 2017-18, they would still fall far short of the minister’s target.
With about a year to go before the elections, pressure is also building on the government to deliver on Modi’s promise of cleaning the Ganga. As ThePrint reported in December last year, only 8.52 per cent of the Rs 20,000 crore budget has been released in the first three years by the government to clean the Ganga.
In September last year, Gadkari was given charge of the ministry, but he is not able to devote the amount of time needed to resolve multi-layered complications involving so many agencies, said a senior ministry official.